No. 36 Soho Square

What is known of the early history of this house
is described above under Nos. 33–34. Inhabitants
have included Sir John St. Barbe, c. 1691–1712;
Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Whitaker (previously at
No. 25), 1713–35; Rev. Thomas Bennett,
1772–88; Charles Maynard, second Viscount
Maynard, 1790–1, (fn. 1) who was married to Anne
Parsons, otherwise Horton, described by Horace
Walpole as 'the Duke of Grafton's Mrs. Horton,
the Duke of Dorset's Mrs. Horton, everybody's
Mrs. Horton'; (fn. 2) (Sir) John Burton, knight,
1802–11; George Routledge, publisher, 1843–
58, and John Russell Smith, publisher, 1858–
1888. (fn. 1)

The plan of this house, with the characteristic
closet-wing at the rear (in this case behind the
staircase) suggests that the fabric may be substantially of late seventeenth-century date. The
house is of four main storeys and three windows
wide. The front was refaced, probably in the
late eighteenth century (Plate 93b). Its plainness is relieved by a first-floor storey-band where
the long windows have bowed wrought-iron
guards, the windows above having simpler flat
ones. The brickwork has been coloured red.
The stuccoed ground storey has two altered
windows and a round-arched doorway with
narrow side-lights and an ornamental fanlight
over. The interior has been altered at different
dates but particularly in the late eighteenth century, when the principal rooms were evidently
refitted, most of them still retaining small enriched
cornices and plain joinery of that date. It was
probably at this time that the front room on the
ground floor was extended at the expense of the
room behind, the old dividing wall being replaced
by a Doric colonnade. This arrangement has been
partially changed and there is generally a good
deal of modern partitioning and other alteration
in the house. The ground-floor front room contains a good chimneypiece dating from the second
half of the eighteenth century (Plate 129c).
It is of white marble, inlaid with brown, and has
flat consoles, key ornament in the frieze and a
tablet carved with an urn. In the rear room, the
slightly later chimneypiece is of wood with cast
ornament and veined marble slips. The frieze is
decorated with arabesques and putti, the stops
having urns in relief; the cornice has carved
mouldings and the jambs are decorated with panels
containing drops. The hall is simple late eighteenth-century work and the early nineteenthcentury staircase is even plainer though spaciously
planned. The stair rises on either side of an
open well to finish at the second floor, receiving
daylight from the large oval skylight in the flat
ceiling. The first-floor rooms are now of little
interest, but the now divided front room probably
contained the fine chimneypiece that ornaments
the south front room on the second floor (Plate
129e). In the late eighteenth-century Grecian
taste, and of white statuary marble, it has pilasterjambs decorated with shaped pendants containing
portrait medallions, below frieze stops carved with
draped females, one holding a ship's rudder, and
the other an anchor. The frieze is broken with a
large carved tablet representing Britannia receiving bales and barrels of merchandise, just unloaded
from a three-masted vessel.